On 8 Jul 2005 at 9:18, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
I think they are going to have to abandon the yearly upgrades. I
think it's a really bad business practice in the first place, because
it places a schedule on development that is artificial -- a software
development schedule should be determined by the goals of the
projects currently on the table for implementation/revision/fixing.
Actually, that can be a good discipline for the developers, and for the
marketing department as well. With today's software tools (and I'm not
so convinced Finale developers are able to use the best tools, given the
code legacy they deal with), a good programmer can develop just about
any feature in a matter of days or weeks. The most complex things might
stretch into multiple months, but the idea of multi-year development
just makes no sense in today's software world.
Most code being written today is discarded inside of 3 years, so I'd
definitely not want to see any software vendor do anything less than one
major set of enhancements a year. In my business we are delivering a
major release every 60 days or so.
The issue with Finale is not the annual cycle. The issue is the
quantity of enhancements delivered in that annual package. The sad
reality is that these annual enhancements include just a trickle of
enhancements that are genuinely useful to the serious composer,
arranger, or copyist. It seems to a be a company working at a 1985 pace
when most of the software world is working at 2005 speed. I am very
sympathetic with the curse of legacy code. But if they can't get in
control of that problem, they are in trouble.
As users who have a vested interest in Finale surviving, we cannot solve
the software problems for them. But we can buy upgrades to help them
fund the continued development. Anybody who cares enough to post
messages on an Internet board really shouldn't be complaining about
paying a hundred bucks a year to keep the thing going.
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